


Morning After

by Corycides



Series: 100 Fics in 100 Days [31]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without Miles to wait for, Monroe has to find a new reason to keep the Republic going</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning After

 

Sebastian Monroe, President of the Monroe Republic and General of the Militia, was a carefully crafted mask. The controlled expressions, the deliberate body language, the slightly mannered speech – all to hide any weakness. It was a mask that Bass had been wearing so long, he didn't think he could take it off any more.

Sometimes, though, it did sleep.

'Oh, fuck me,' he groaned, trying to breathe without moving his rib-cage. Everything hurt. His hair hurt. He wasn't paralysed – but his body appeared to have gone tharn in the hopes that might help. It didn't.

It took him five minutes to convince his arms and legs that nothing was going to snap off if he moved. He finally rolled out of bed, groaning and popping and creaking, and limped into the bathroom.

Pissing turned out to be a mistake.

He leaned on the sink and stared at his reflection, fist-sized bruises mottling his skin and blood dried in his stubble. It wasn't pretty, but 15 years ago he'd have gone home with whatever woman he'd started the fight over and not for tea and sympathy. 5 years go, he'd have bitched the next morning but still been up and on his horse.

Sometime between then and now, when he'd not been paying attention, he'd gotten old. He was still good – although maybe he should practice more, Miles had looked a lot less wrung out than Bass had felt as the slippery bastard went through that window – but he was old man good. When you won the fight because you had to, because there was no way you could get it up for a rematch the next day when you were worried about pissing blood.

He'd never thought about getting old. Even before the Blackout he'd assumed he'd die young and leave a good looking corpse, nothing that came afterwards had given him reason to expect anything else. So now what?

* * *

 

Jeremy staggered to a halt first, wheezing out something that could have been either 'please' or 'fuck you'. He staggered over to the side of the road and puked in the bushes, leaning against a tree until he could straighten up again. Bass stood with his hands on his hips and tried to look like he wasn't about ten steps off doing the same. Behind them Jenkinson and Vance just flopped down in the road, coughing like old mules.

'Why?' Jeremy finally managed, stripping his sweat-sodden shirt off. 'What...I....do now?'

Bass scrubbed his hand through his hair, slicking his hair flat to his skull. 'Miles isn't coming back.'

'Maybe...chocolates?' Jeremy said, popping the top of his water bottle and sucking on it. He finished and lowered it, wiping his sleeve over his mouth, thought about it and staggered back to the bush to puke again.

_'You mean nothing to me.'_

The memory hurt nearly as bad as his kidneys had.

'It isn't going to be scattered groups of disorganised rebels any more,' Bass said, as Jeremy limped back to the road. 'It's going to be an army, led by Miles Matheson. We have to be ready.'

Jeremy took another swig of water, swished it around his mouth and spat onto the ground.

'Think it's too late for me to switch sides?' he said. 'I could be demoted. I only bothered being an officer because it meant I didn't have to run.'

'Three burned towns too late,' Bass said. 'Now get up and run, or I'm going to take that seriously.'

He ignored the gnaw of paranoia that wondered if there _was_ truth hidden under the joke. If he could trust anyone it was Jeremy – the man had no ambition. None Bass had ever seen anyhow.

Under Bass' goad his officers finally got up and lumbered back into a run. He kept pace with them and pretended it was by choice. His leg, broken two years after the Blackout and his first real exposure to how much being injured sucked without x-rays or any pain relief but what they could scavenge, ache-burnt with every step.

He could run until next year and it wouldn't make him any younger, wouldn't loosen old scar tissue or smooth lumpy bones. One day he was going to die – alone, mourned officially if at all – and nothing was going to change that.

But the Republic could live on. His immortality, and a last 'fuck you' to Miles.

 

 


End file.
